This Week’s RTC Blogpoll
Posted by nvr1983 on February 16th, 2009As part of the new Blogpoll, we’ll be posting our poll on RTC.net that will then be used to create a composite Blogpoll that will be released at a later date. I’m pretty sure this is how it is supposed to work, but if it isn’t this post will probably disappear pretty quickly.
This week was a rather difficult one to rank teams since so many of the top 25 teams lost to teams they probably shouldn’t have. As always, I’m open to your suggestions. I may not agree with them, but I will take them into consideration for future voting. Feel free to leave compliments or complaints in the “Comment” section.
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| Rank | Team | Delta |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | North Carolina |  2 |
| 2 | Connecticut |  1 |
| 3 | Oklahoma | 1 |
| 4 | Pittsburgh | |
| 5 | Michigan St. | 5 |
| 6 | Memphis | 5 |
| 7 | Louisville | 2 |
| 8 | Duke | |
| 9 | Villanova | 5 |
| 10 | Arizona St. | 12 |
| 11 | Wake Forest | 4 |
| 12 | Clemson | 3 |
| 13 | Missouri | 5 |
| 14 | Marquette | 2 |
| 15 | Illinois | 5 |
| 16 | Purdue | 1 |
| 17 | Xavier | 4 |
| 18 | Kansas | 2 |
| 19 | Butler | 4 |
| 20 | UCLA | 14 |
| 21 | Gonzaga | 3 |
| 22 | Syracuse | 3 |
| 23 | Florida St. | |
| 24 | Utah St. | 5 |
| 25 | Louisiana St. | |
| Last week’s ballot | ||
Dropped Out: Minnesota (#21), Texas (#23).
You already know what I’m going to whine about; the email address should make it very clear. What is your reason for dropping UConn to 2? We won twice this week, once against a ranked opponent, and while the Seton Hall game was closer than it should have been (based upon talent disparity, at least) we still did what we should do against a Seton Hall: out-rebound the hell out of them. I could understand some skepticism as to how good we are without Dyson (different story for a different day) but even that would be polling by assumed future results.
You’re right about my reason. It’s solely based on Dyson. It’s a combination of the Seton Hall game, which I’ll admit I actually did not get to see live because I was traveling, and my thoughts on how the injury will affect them going forward. If UConn is able to beat Pitt (even at home) and nothing else strange happens next week, I’ll put them back at #1.
I have mixed feelings about the Dyson loss. Offensively, I expect to see a sort of zero-sum; while Dyson handles the bulk of our possessions (although it always feels like A.J. is the go-to-guy), he’s shockingly inefficient for a “go-to” scorer. Price, Kemba (first name only, thank you very much), and Austrie are much more efficient but they are also more turnover prone than Dyson. Thus Dyson’s best attriubute, from an offensive stand point, is his ability to hold on to the darn ball. While we may see more turnovers in the waning weeks of the season, I expect to see our eFG (courtesy Ken Pom!) rise enough so that we score at roughly the same clip.
Where we will sorely miss Dyson, especially tonight against a PG of the caliber of Fields, is on defense; we will particularly want his on-ball pressure. Dyson’s tremendous steal percentage and low TO percentage are good for an extra few possessions per game; we cannot compensate for those defensive turnovers against a guy like Fields.
This game comes down to two things, and they’re both fairly obvious: Thabeet-Blair (if Blair gets in foul trouble…), and Adrien-Young. I’d say Blair has the slight edge over Hash but it is insane to think that any mere mortal can out-awesome Jeff Adrien.
Dougo–
You might be right about Dyson’s impact on the team as you have hopefully watched more of UConn’s games than I have (one of the disadvantages of being a national college basketball site). Dyson’s defensive ability will be even more important against a team like UNC where they have two outstanding offensive guard in Ellington and Lawson.
I’m actually going to make a post about the UNC-Pitt game pretty soon and will be live blogging the game so you’re welcome to come back then and let us know your thoughts on the game. You can bring along some of your fellow UConn fans if you want too.